SOCAR Tower

SOCAR Tower in Baku is the tallest building in Azerbaijan and the Caucasus region. The building, a skyscraper, is the headquarters of SOCAR (State Oil Company of Azerbaijan Republic). Construction started in 2010 and was completed in 2016. The SOCAR Tower is located on Heydar Aliyev Avenue, a long highway from the main airport to downtown Baku, which is visible on the way to the city center. It is one of the landmarks of the Azerbaijani capital, along with the Flame Towers and other architectural masterpieces.

Design

The building, which was designed by Heerim Architects from South Korea, is an example of structural expressionism. It is composed of two towers which curve around each other as they rise, according to skyscraper.com, "the seemingly shorter tower almost looks like its resting its head on the chest of the taller tower. The taller towers peak slightly bending over it in a confident, reassuring and comforting manner". The tower is 209 m (686 ft) tall and have 42 floors, covering an area of 12,000 m² (130,000 sq ft) and providing 100,000 m² (1,100,000 sq ft) of usage area. The headquarter mainly houses office space, but it also has conference and sports facilities, a guest house, retail spaces and food outlets.

The building's design is based on a composite system of steel construction with reinforced concrete walls. The building is designed to be resistant to wind speeds of 190 km/h (120 mph) and a magnitude nine earthquake by the Richter scale.

The building, designed by South Korean Heerim Architects & Planners Co. Ltd, based on the concept of "wind and fire", was built by the Turkish company Tekfen Construction and Installation.

Text imported from Wikipedia article "SOCAR Tower" and modified on July 23, 2019 according to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 International license.